ing anger,
and for once the circumspect Miss Davis acted upon impulse undeterred
by thought. Entering the house softly, she ran upstairs to the west
room which she entered without knocking.

Desire, seated at the dressing table, turned in surprise. She was ready
for bed, but lingered over the brushing of her hair. With another spasm
of anger, Mary noticed the hair she brushed--hair long and lustrous and
lifted in soft waves. A pink kimona lay across the back of her chair, a
pretty thing--but not at all French.

"Put it on," said Mary, "and come here. I want to show you something."

Desire did not ask "What?" Nor did she keep Mary waiting. Pleasant or
unpleasant, it was not Desire's way to delay revelation. Together the
two girls hurried out into the dew-sweet garden. As they went, Mary
spoke in gusty sentences.

"I don't care what you do." (She was almost sobbing in her anger.) "I
don't understand you.... I don't want to.... But you're not going
to get away with it ... that cool air of yours ... pretending not
to see.... If you are human at all you'll see ... and remember all
your life."

They were close to the library window now. Desire looked in.

She looked so long and stood so still that Mary had time to get back a
little of her breath and something of her common sense. An instinct
which her selfish life had pretty well buried began to stir.

"Come away," she whispered, "I shouldn't have ... it wasn't fair
... he would never forgive us if he knew we had seen him like this!"

Desire drew back instantly.

"No," she said. Her voice was toneless. Her face in the darkness
gleamed wedge-shaped and unfamiliar between the falling waves of her
hair.

"I'm sorry," said Mary sulkily. "But I thought you ought to know what
you are doing. It takes a lot to break up a man like that."

"Yes," said Desire. "All the same I had no right--"

"You will have," said Desire evenly.

They were at her door now. She paused with her hand on the knob.

"I knew he cared," she said in the same level voice, "but I didn't know
that he cared like that."

"You know now," said Mary. Her irritation was returning.

"Yes," said Desire. "Good-night."

She opened the door and went in.

CHAPTER XXXIV

It seems incredible and yet it is a fact that Bainbridge never knew
that young Mrs. Spence had run away. Full credit for this must be given
to Miss Caroline Campion, who never really believed it herself--a
mental limitation which